Tuesday, November 21
Presented by Seema Kumar, CEO, Cure
On this week’s Tuesday Talks, Vishal Mehta, an expert pharma innovator, explained how his company speeds innovation by bringing efficiency to one of the most complex and costly enterprises in the life sciences– testing a candidate drug in people.
Topic: A fireside chat to talk about the testing of a candidate drug in people.
Speakers: Vishal Mehta, CEO, Ubuntu Research, Inc. In conversation with Seema Kumar, CEO of Cure.
22+ years’ experience across pharmaceutical, biotechnology & contract research organization (CRO), enabling deep insights into clinical trials execution frameworks, drug development strategies and business operations. Successfully lead development operation teams across multiple drug development programs in hematology & oncology product development culminating into global product licensing. More recently (~2016 onwards) my focus area has been in Cell Therapy development, where there has been an acute need for innovative strategies in clinical trial planning & execution. Enabling such solutions in clinical trials have resulted in successful global marketing authorizations (BLA/MAA) for cell therapy products Breyanzi® and Abecma®, and I am extremely proud to be part of this development journey.
Seema joined Cure Experience in 2022 as the Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Cure, Ms. Kumar spent nearly 20 years at Johnson & Johnson in senior leadership roles, including most recently as the Global Head, Office of Innovation, Global Health and Scientific Engagement, and served on J&J’s Innovation Strategy, Public health leadership and the COVID-19 vaccine steering committee, where she led the company’s external affairs efforts and public education program on COVID and vaccine literacy. Before her tenure at J&J, Ms. Kumar was the Chief of Staff to Dr. Eric Lander and the Chief Communications Officer at the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Genome Research where she played a leadership role in the Human Genome Project. She also has held leadership positions at the U.S. National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institutes of Health, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Ms. Kumar holds an M.S. in Science Journalism and Communications from the University of Maryland.